


Coisich, a rùin [come, my love]

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Music, Music as a love language, Prompt Fill, Time Skips, Tumblr Prompt, the band Au, vague so as to avoid spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:00:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23051344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: From a series of prompts for Francis/Philippa in the band AU over on tumblr. Scenes in their relationship, from the end of Pawn in Frankincense through to the close of Checkmate.Originally posted on tumblr.
Relationships: Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny/Philippa Somerville
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Lymond fics set in the Band/'80s AU





	1. Las Vegas, September 1985

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erinaceina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinaceina/gifts).



> Hamal is Kuzúm's name in this AU (Kedi, who is an Arabic speaker, names him, but Hamal means 'lambkin' just the same as Kuzucuyum).

“None of this is your fault.”

Philippa folded her arms over her stomach and raised her chin. “Please. I did choose to inveigle my way into your tour.”

Behind the door that Francis Crawford held closed two blond boys slept soundly. One was his son, born to the ex-model Oonagh O’Dwyer; the other was the child of Joleta Reid Malett and a raucous night at a Swiss ski chalet. Or so the details they had uncovered seemed to indicate.

The older – smaller - boy’s uncle had systematically destroyed all evidence of the child’s true birth, and to social services he was now little more than an awkward reminder of a number of security breaches. A child whose mother could not imagine accepting responsibility for him, not while she was busy putting her own life together from its fragmented parts.

“But I won’t just leave him here,” Philippa set her jaw to stop her lips from quivering. Her voice was firm, if a little on the petulant side to her own ears, and her heart was fixed. And that, she knew, would be enough for her mother to forgive her any other mistakes. “Even if he wasn’t Joleta’s, I couldn’t just leave him.”

Lymond sighed and ran a pale hand through his hair. It was not entirely clear whether his other grip rested on the door handle in order to protect the boys’ rest, or because he needed the support himself. His skin was waxy and his deep-set blue eyes were brighter and wandered more than usual.

“I know,” he said eventually.

He sounded tired, but as resolute as Philippa herself felt. It made her hopeful and scared all at once.

“I think I know a way.”


	2. Flaw Valleys, February 1986

Through the kitchen window, Kate Somerville watched her teenage daughter leading a wobbling toddler across the puddle-strewn yard. Philippa bent to point out the chickens to Hamal, and she swept a cascade of brown hair back over her ear as she leaned forwards.

Clad in a puffy winter coat that had once belonged to Philippa, Hamal gazed at the birds in his steady, wondering fashion. After a moment’s contemplation his face lit up, and he yelled “Chooks!”

Philippa laughed as the nearest hens responded with an aggrieved flutter of wings at the sound, scampering away from the humans they had hoped were bringing them food.

Kate sat down in one of the worn old Windsors and wrung her hands in her lap. Outside, Philippa showed Hamal how to pick up fists full of seed and cast it in wide arcs for the hens. The scene was a timeless jumble to Kate’s eyes: the child in the bright red jacket was Philippa, and the smiling, nurturing tone in the young woman’s voice was her own – even if the designer woollen coat and the pink beret were not.

It made Kate miss Gideon utterly, and it made her proud and afraid and sad and furious with the regret she felt.

She remembered the serious defence of her actions that Philippa had mounted, forced to call Kate from a motel in New Jersey. She had told Kate, her voice distant, tinny and solemn, that after all she had done to hurt him, the least she could do was help Mr Crawford find his son and keep his career from going off the rails.

He had taken the phone after her and promised Kate that Archie would drive her to the airport for the next available flight to Edinburgh. Philippa’s strident objections had echoed down the line, and firm and reassuring, Francis Crawford had continued over her, his speech aimed at Kate: “You have my word.”


	3. Brittany, August 1988

On their way back from a strange weekend at the Blyth holiday home near Nantes, an incongruous couple found their car broken down in the depths of the Breton countryside. The 2CV emitted steam and beneath the bonnet its engine clucked furiously. It was pushed to the entrance of a farm track, and its passengers abandoned it to walk towards the sounds of revelry in the orchard behind the buildings.

Francis Crawford, clad in a deceptively subdued black jumpsuit, and his wife – _strictly_ on paper – of three years, in her red leather trousers and immaculate Balmain jacket, sauntered towards fields that danced to the tune of a gavotte. Philippa laughed as she recognised the violon’s melody and skipped a few twirling steps along the dusty gravel. She clapped her hands above her head in time to the tune, delighting, simply, in the familiar thrill the traditional music inspired in her.

Francis shook his head at the display, but he smiled and added a few of his own syncopated claps and heel stomps to hers.

In the fresh cut grass beneath green pear trees local people danced reels, their clothes of brown and blue mingling with the colours of the countryside and the soft summer sky. To the side of the field, on a make-shift wooden stage, a pair of elderly men switched between violon and guitar and binioù and bombard, playing with mesmeric, contained energy.

In his easy way, Francis approached a walrus-moustached man and addressed him in Breton, and the man was so taken aback to be spoken to by a stranger in his first tongue that he forgot to be shocked by the garish clothing of the new arrivals.

Philippa listened to their conversation with ferocious interest, picking out what she could understand of it. The middle-aged man was the farmer’s son, and the upshot seemed to be that they could use the telephone in the farmhouse to call a recovery vehicle for their car, but that as it was a Sunday there was unlikely to be any help available immediately. In the meantime, they were warmly invited to celebrate the farmer’s sixtieth birthday with the revellers, and to sleep in the spare room overnight.

Excitedly, Philippa tugged on the elbow of Francis’ silken sleeve. In French, supposing that the other man might understand it better than English, she made a suggestion about the contribution they could make in exchange for the farmer’s generosity.

“ _Jouez-vous_?” he returned immediately.

Philippa beamed at him and at Francis, and her heart ran fast at the wobble in Francis’s serious expression: a wrinkle below his eye deepened, and the dimple in his cheek grew hollow. “ _Ya_ … _oui_ ,” Francis conceded.

The farmer’s son exclaimed “ _Dreist eo_!” and slapped his big hands together.

It was dusk before the sixty-year-old host relinquished the stage to his outlandish guests – none there seemed to know of Lymond, or to care for him and his hits if they did – and it was with impolite bemusement that most watched Francis sling the guitar over his shoulder and Philippa nudge the warm body of the violon beneath her chin.

“Twa Corbies?” Francis murmured to her, and Philippa nodded and plucked her strings to check the tuning.

She began the refrain, haunting and high, like a dark cloud over the fête, but the people murmured in approval and recognition. When Francis began to sing it was not the Scots words that Philippa knew well, but a Breton version that seemed to alter the story. Her fiddle wove in and out of the steady chords he played, her hazel eyes rested on his cornflower blue, each checking the other was thinking the same thing, anticipating the same thing, moving ever in the same direction.

“ _Neventi vad d'ar Vretoned,_

_Neventi vad d'ar Vretoned,_

_Ha mallozh ruz d'ar C'hallaoued_ …”

Francis sang, and the crowd joined in with gusto, and the old farmer returned to the wooden boards of the stage to dance with his wife, their hard-heeled boots adding percussion to the tune Francis and Philippa played.

It was a canny way to start their set. The audience gathered around, newly willing to hear more, and so Francis leaned over to murmur another title in Philippa’s ear, and she felt the brush of his hair on her temple, smelled his aftershave and shampoo, seemed to understand his words within her body before her ear and brain translated them.

The next song they played was one he had taunted her with at Flaw Valleys many years ago: one of Nic Jones’s tripping, clever arrangements, finger-picked and bounding along through the story of Reynard like a galloping hound in pursuit of the fox. Philippa had never played accompaniment to it, certainly never with him, but she felt that she understood the whims of his hands so well, and the sound of the violon flew after the guitar, and her clear bright voice joined his in call and response, and Philippa did not even notice the whooping approval of the local afficionados.

She dictated the next, and when she named a waulking tune she was gratified by the way Francis’s eyes stretched a little wider, the way his lips parted, breathless with exertion, and his neck flushed pink above the low v-neck of his jumpsuit. He nodded to her and let her count them in, and Philippa’s fingers skipped and her elbow and body rocked and her hair swung around her shoulders as she sang and called “ _Coisich, a rùin, hù il oro_ …”

Her enunciation was precise, learned from the Crawford children’s own tutor in Edinburgh, her playing a gathered weave of all her mother and father knew, and all of her own influences – from Joleta’s repeated playing of the Cocteau Twins, to Archie Abernethy’s wide-ranging knowledge of time-signatures, to the youthful compositions she had read in Francis Crawford’s notebooks in Morningside. She forgot the crowd and the couples jigging on the stage around them, she played and sang and smiled for her husband alone, and on the final, ringing lines – “ _Cha b'fhear cearraig, hù il oro, Bheireadh bhuat i, boch orainn o_ …” – Philippa felt her soul tighten and vibrate like the held note, and she realised that she was in the process of divorcing the only man she would ever love.

The moment endured, Francis’s eyes locked with hers, even when a young Breton in a denim shirt bumped his fist to her arm and said: “That was kind of hot.”

Francis laughed a split second before her, but – call and response – Philippa joined him. When the farmer picked up his binioù again the crowd pushed her towards Francis, and he let her link her arm in his, and they skipped, and swapped partners, and she watched him press a kiss to the cheek of the farmer’s wife, and she thought how much less absurd that gesture was than the idea that he -Lymond, _Mr Crawford_ \- could ever love her back.


	4. L’université de Caen-Normandie, September 1989

Early evening, in the student bar at Caen, Francis Crawford took his wife’s coat from her with the utmost care. He gathered the folds of brocaded silk and let her shrug her way free, and when her arm knocked against his hand he turned aside with a sharp breath and murmured his apologies.

She smiled sadly. To the students organising their exclusive, one night only performance, all of Mrs Crawford’s gestures looked exquisitely sad, and they fawned over her in adoration, seeing in her the monochrome melancholy of their idols, with soft dark eyes and slow, careful grace. She was barely older than the undergraduates, but she seemed untouchably worldly, and if any of them did work up the courage to speak to her they soon found her husband at their elbow murmuring a polite request to let her have her space.

He moved among them with a brittle vulnerability of his own, and the students found that whatever they wished to speak to him about, he did not object or silence them. He listened to all with a strained expression of concentration, but his eyes flickered regularly, habitually, to Philippa. The punks showed him the sound system and the kids in flowing baba-cool fashions pointed out the free bar tab for performers (special reference was given to the sophisticated array of Scotch, the fine local cognacs and the complementary chocolates for their esteemed guests).

From the tray of confectionary, Philippa took a dark cube sprinkled with rose petals and dried flakes of strawberry and gave her compliments: the students cooed, and – though he tried none himself – Mr Crawford expressed a forceful gratitude that made knees quiver beneath flowing skirts and pulses race against chain and nail jewellery. A runner was dispatched to bring more chocolate, though Mrs Crawford had limited herself to just the one piece.

Before the show, the photographer from the student paper arrived. An interview had been declined, but the legendary Lymond and the scion of the Somerville folk dynasty had agreed to a brief photo shoot before the gig. They were arranged beneath the hot stage lights, with instruments and then without, and the photographer moved about them, muttering about shadows and contrasts and the how much simpler her job would be if _everyone_ had cheekbones that one could cut butter on.

“It’s very dark,” she finally paused between shots, shaking her purple mohawk. “Your black blouse and her black blouse…”

One of the other punks, the one who had booked them and accrued the most confidence in speaking to Lymond, snapped his fingers. “Oh, hey, here’s an idea! Mr Crawford: take off your shirt.”

“Yes, perfect!” The photographer agreed. “May I?” she reached towards Lymond’s belt to untuck the blouse and he stepped smartly back.

“No. I think not.”

The photographer laughed. “Oh sorry, you can take it off yourself – don’t worry, Mrs Crawford, I’m not interested in men,” she chuckled.

Philippa swallowed and wrung her hands together. She tried to smile to show that she did not care, but it dissolved in the nausea filling the back of her mouth.

“Take it off if you want to, love,” she said quietly to her husband.

He bristled at the photographer: “I don’t.”

But he agreed to change into a white shirt proffered by one of the other students, and swept his black silk blouse off in one swift gesture. Philippa, who already knew that she could not bear to look because of what she could not bear to contemplate, excused herself, and if one or two girls exchanged significant glances at the sounds of retching in the ladies’ toilets – well, those rumours had been out there since Mr and Mrs Crawford had taken themselves away from the public eye together three months prior.


	5. Edinburgh, November 1989

From the tinted hotel window, Philippa saw the crowds surge. She could guess who that was, pinned to the ground beneath Jerott’s plunging fists as Richard stood behind, his face ashen, no calls for restraint on his lips, though his hands faltered at Jerott’s broad shoulders and security guards pushed towards them.

Shielded from above by the awning of the lobby, the worst of it was invisible to her.

She turned, her heart thundering like a bass drum against the back of her sternum. Archie stood by the bed and shook his head minutely, but Philippa would not be protected this time: not from this. What would protection do for her now? What was there left to shield her from now she felt the final veils between her and her love snatched away – now she saw all the pity and the waste of the last months they had spent apart in one another’s company?

With the strength of all her regret, Philippa reached for the armchair placed against the hotel wall and hurled it down in Archie’s path when he saw her heading to the door.

“I have to go to him!” she cried, apology in her eyes as the drummer knocked his shins on the fallen chair and cursed.

Philippa bolted through the doorway, her eyes already streaming, her knees threatening with every step to let her drop, shaking to the thick patterned carpet.

 _It’s not fair_ , she thought, again and again. These things had happened before, and each time she had read the memorial issues of the music magazines, numb with shock, trying to figure out why death was necessary in order for someone to _matter_. He had mattered anyway: his music, his words, even all of his stymied achievements and the frustrated potential that spoke of such possibilities yet to be explored.

Philippa felt like she was running with a full cup, and as she ran it overflowed, covering her in the things she had previously kept contained.

She made it to the end of the corridor and glanced back – Archie was fumbling to close the room door, and in front of her the lift was already on its way up. It might be quicker to take the stairs though, she thought, lest Archie also catch the lift and somehow prevent her from leaving it when she reached the ground floor… Philippa stood for a moment considering this, her breath coming heavy as she wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands.

The lift arrived with a bright ‘ding’ that made her startle, and she felt for an instant like she had been lanced directly in her struggling heart.

Philippa stared, dumbfounded, as the doors began to open and a bowed golden head became visible.

Her hands clapped to her mouth and Francis looked up as the lift doors widened.

“Philippa?” He murmured, and he looked like a flower opening up to her.

Her whole body thrummed with the effect of whiplash, and Philippa let out a small sound containing many emotions as she stumbled forwards to run the last few steps into his arms.

Francis froze when he saw her move towards him. He held his bag and his guitar to either side of his body and then, when he saw she was coming all the way to him, he dropped them and enfolded her, pressing silk and appliqué and streaming brown hair together in his encircling hold.

The lift doors closed behind Philippa.

She nuzzled into his neck and her grip tightened on his body, and Philippa found that nothing made more sense than the way his back curved under her touch, the way it was gently pliant at his waist and held stable strength through his shoulders. She bunched her fists in his clothes and pulled back a little to look up into his eyes – his face was so very close.

He smelled of pine and mint, and Philippa’s gaze felt weighted so that it kept falling to that long mouth, not twisted wryly now, but open a little and pink, wet where he had run his tongue over his lips.

Francis’s body shivered in her hold. He started to ask - “Can I kiss you?”

Philippa’s lips cut him off.

**Author's Note:**

> The songs Francis and Philippa play are:  
> \- An Alarc'h, a Breton song about defeating the French, sung to the tune of Twa Corbies  
> \- Reynard the Fox, based on Nic Jones's 1970 arrangement  
> \- Coisich, A Rùin, a Scottish tweed waulking song


End file.
